Astronomy and space exploration

The nose of the Starship hopper fell over in the 50mph winds. The lower tank section's fine. It'll be a couple of weeks for them to fix up the nose, which currently looks like a non flaming version of the Hindenburg.
 

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Blue Origin's New Shepard reusable rocket launch and landing:
Its such an odd duck :neutral:

I really don't understand the whole sub-orbital 100km straight up and then straight back down thing, really doesn't seem like much point especially for 'nasa science payloads'.

Meanwhile this back in Dec
Rocketlabs using batteries to run fuel pumps -> all fuel goes to propulsion.
I'm not sure I'm convinced its actually more efficient but it does actually seem to work & they've secured a bunch of commercial payloads all the way to orbit.
Also if you piss us off we can now bombard you with Hobbit feet & frozen Lamb legs from fucking space! :runaway:
 
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I really don't understand the whole sub-orbital 100km straight up and then straight back down thing, really doesn't seem like much point especially for 'nasa science payloads'.

I guess there's some experiments you can only do in microgravity. They have 3-4 minutes of that after separation. The main point of NS is as a reusable test vehicle for Blue. Their New Glenn orbital vehicle will launch in a couple of years. It'll be huge!

They're kind of building it from the top down. The 2nd stage of NG is derived from NS. It uses hydrogen fuel and a vacuum versions of NS's BE3 engine.

Rocketlabs using batteries to run fuel pumps -> all fuel goes to propulsion.
I'm not sure I'm convinced its actually more efficient but it does actually seem to work & they've secured a bunch of commercial payloads all the way to orbit.

Electric pumps + batteries have lousy power to weight ratio compared to conventional turbopumps in large rockets. Turbo pumps don't scale down very well though, so it's a good choice for Electron, which is a relatively small rocket.
 
Their New Glenn orbital vehicle will launch in a couple of years.
...
The 2nd stage of NG is derived from NS.
Ah so these 100km up & down hops aren't the final target?
I had the impression just making it reliable enough for high frequency space tourism up/down was the end goal.

Turbo pumps don't scale down very well though, so it's a good choice for Electron
Also good info :smile2:
 
Ah so these 100km up & down hops aren't the final target?
I had the impression just making it reliable enough for high frequency space tourism up/down was the end goal.

They don't plan to fly people to orbit for all least 5 years, so that'll be suborbital for a while.

Their New Glenn rocket has a factory, launch facility under construction and the engine has almost finished development. It's more than just a CG showreel, but this their CG showreel.

 
Nothing about New Horizons new pictures of Ultima Thule? Is this proof that the Universe started with God(s) playing skittles?

Thunderf00t did a pretty impressive vid I just watched
Possibility of it being super low density kinda like foam never occurred to me but retrospectively should have probably been pretty obvious
 
Also I just can't think of that name without my mind going immediately to
xRcJvdYh.jpg

Has been bugging me all day (yes I know its spelt differently but you know, there is no Thule, only Zuul)
 
Also I just can't think of that name without my mind going immediately to
xRcJvdYh.jpg

Has been bugging me all day (yes I know its spelt differently but you know, there is no Thule, only Zuul)
Hahaha, I have to watch all those movies, now that I think of it!

She was great in Kill Bill.
Lol! BTW, when the guy in the video said that the moon is approximately the size of "America" and then a map showed that the moon occupies the space of the US, I cringed a bit.
 
Yesterday, NASA announced that in one week we'll see the first demo flight for the Crew Dragon capsule (uncrewed). :love:

Also yesterday, this:
Virgin Galactic Reaches Space Again, Flies Test Passenger for 1st Time
By Meghan Bartels 17 hours ago Spaceflight

In its first flight with a test passenger on board, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity flew into the Mojave sunrise this morning (Feb. 22) and soared to an altitude of 55.87 miles (89.9 kilometers), just two months after its first flight to space.

WhiteKnightTwo, the plane that lifts VSS Unity high enough to fire its motor, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port launch site in California a few minutes after 11 a.m. EST (1400 GMT). Unity separated about an hour into the flight, then fired its motor.

During the flight, VSS Unity reached a top speed of Mach 3.0 and reached a maximum altitude 4.4 miles (7 km) higher than Virgin Galactic's historic Dec. 13 flight.
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-powered-flight-february-2019.html
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-powered-flight-february-2019.html
Dz8jHR1VsAEU3fj.jpg:large

I wonder if one day this ship will take off on its own. I don't know if this has ever been mentioned as a future goal.
 
SpaceShipTwo rocket motor isn't powerful enough to do that. You'd be talking about a different vehicle.

Virgin hasn't talked about what it wants to do next. Air launch doesn't really scale very well. The now canned orbital craft Stratolaunch was developing needed the biggest plane in the world and was only as capable as a medium lift rocket.
 
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